


Strength of a Different Kind

by onereyofstarlight



Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen, argument, resolved conflict
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-06-03
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:13:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24518218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onereyofstarlight/pseuds/onereyofstarlight
Summary: Brains confronts Scott on the way home about how he behaved on the mission. Follows directly from Runaway (1x07)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Strength of a Different Kind

Brains said very little as they stood on the train platform, waiting for John to send Thunderbird One back to pick them up. Scott wasn’t sure why it was taking him so long – if he had been in closer range to his ‘bird and able to bring her back to him himself, they’d be halfway to Tracy Island by now. Forced patience lead to forced conversation, but the stilted answers from his friend soon killed his enthusiasm. Scott had never felt so awkward following a rescue before.

“You did great, Brains,” said Scott. He was trying for an encouraging tone, but the words felt limp in his mouth. “I liked how you…”

His voice trailed away at the unimpressed look Brains levelled at him.

“P-please don’t Scott. I would like to go home.”

The deafening roar of Thunderbird One’s engines drowned out Scott’s small “okay”.

He gave a tight smile as the train engineer clapped him on the shoulder and wished him well, before quickly following Brains into the heart of his ship. Lady Penelope might scold him later if the brush-off reached her ears, but he had larger concerns for the moment than reputation.

Brains was already strapped in.

“You ready?”

“Yes, thank you Scott.”

Scott narrowed his eyes as he looked back at Brains. The frostiness was starting to get to him but as long as the engineer didn’t want to talk about it, Scott knew he wouldn’t. He shrugged and turned back to the controls, pulling up a commlink to his brother.

“How’s my flight path looking, John?”

“You’re cleared for flight, Thunderbird One. Veer south by south east once you’re over the Pacific, there’s a nice little weather system heading for the Japanese coast line.”

“How bad is it?” asked Scott. “Should we stay?”

“I’ve spoken to the authorities already, they’ve assured me that their own civil defence will handle it. Besides, I want Brains to have a look over this computer programme. Alan recognised it was using game theory – except I know the type of coding that goes into a game theory operation and this isn’t it.”

“Could you forward me a c-copy, John?”

“I could Brains, but I’d rather not. Something seems off about this virus, but I can’t put my finger on it. Until I know what it is, we should keep it contained.”

“FAB, John.”

“See you at home.”

The holo died and Scott chanced one more look back at Brains before he eased the throttle forwards.

“You okay, Brains?”

“Fine,” came the terse reply. “Perhaps you’ll take m-my request for a lower velocity m-more seriously this time?”

Scott squirmed guiltily in his seat.

“Sure thing. I’m sorry about earlier.”

“N-not as sorry as I was.”

He couldn’t argue with that. The silence stretched into the long seconds. At her top speed, Thunderbird One could be home in twenty minutes. At this subsonic crawl, it would take nearly seven hours.

“Do you want some music or something?”

“No. Thank you.”

He heard a deep breath from behind him.

“Scott, I need to speak with you.”

His shoulders tensed at the words. Whatever had been eating Brains, Scott was about to find out.

He checked the flight plan one last time before setting the controls to autopilot. It was with a plastered smile that he spun his chair around to face Brains.

“What’s up, Brains? I know something’s been eating you.”

“I want to ask if you res..sp-respect me.”

Scott’s eyes widened.

“What do you mean? Of course I do.”

“I d-don’t think you do. Not after today.”

Scott was still processing that comment when Brains sighed.

“You shouldn’t have brought m..me. It was a bad c-call.”

“You did great,” protested Scott. “We couldn’t have done it without you there.”

“Yes, you could have,” said Brains firmly. “For all that you thought you needed me, in the end John found a way around the p-problem.”

“There was no guarantee he would, or even could.” Scott crossed his arms across his chest, leaning forward in his seat. “You were our best chance at success. It wasn’t a spur of the moment decision, I thought it through.”

“I’m not s..saying that you didn’t–”

“Then what’s the problem?”

Brains pulled himself upright, looking him directly in the eye.

“You d-didn’t let me finish.”

Scott blinked.

“Sorry, Brains, I just–”

“N-no, Scott, listen to me. I’ve read the reports, I know how you operate. You sat in that seat and you fell back on solely reacting to the s..situation. You needed to adapt your approach and you d-didn’t.”

Scott felt a flare of anger, the heat rising to his cheeks as quick as the vicious defence that scorched his tongue. He bit back his hasty arguments, trying to focus on the man in front of him.

“What d’you mean I didn’t?” he demanded. “What’s wrong with my approach anyway? We saved the guy, didn’t we?”

“You wouldn’t listen to m..me when I asked you to slow d-down.”

“People were in danger!”

“You shoved m-me out of Thunderbird One,” said Brains loudly, acting as though he hadn’t heard him. “I was scared out of m..my mind, and you were too busy laughing to notice nearly crashing into a m…m-mountain.”

“I wasn’t laughing, I–”

“You were rash, Scott, you c-couldn’t take two seconds to find another way of d-doing it?”

“I had to take charge, there wasn’t any time.”

“No time?” Brains levelled him with a glare that pinned Scott to his seat. “N-no time to listen to the expert you chose to bring with you?”

“You know it’s not like that Brains, come on.”

“I’m not like you Scott, I can’t jump out of planes. I was an untrained operative in the field, and you c-couldn’t show m..me enough respect to trust my knowledge in m..my own abilities.”

“If you’d had just trusted me–”

“Trusted _you_?” Bitter laughter echoed around the cockpit. “You made it clear you d-didn’t trust me, why should I have done the same?”

“Brains, we’re on the same team.”

“What you d-did, Scott, was not teamwork. You thought ahead as far as needing me there, and no m..more than that.”

“When you’re in a rescue situation, nothing matters except the people we’re saving. Nothing. We couldn’t afford to wait for you to get your head in the game.”

Brains shook his head.

“You’re wrong, Scott. Your team has to c-c-come first. Your brothers trust you with their lives. I trusted you with m..mine. I shouldn’t have been thinking I m-made a miss-m..mistake to do that.”

Scott froze, the implication of that statement sinking into his skin. He knew the value of a team that had your back, had had it drilled into him when he was still green and barely out of high school. Basic training had stripped his individuality in favour of a cohesive unit that lived and died by the trust and faith they placed in each other. He knew better than all his brothers, except perhaps Gordon, how important trust in his teammates was.

He knew how closely trust and respect were tied together. Brains had been right. And he had been wrong.

He’d been wrong before. The memory constricted around his heart, the last time his arrogance and dismissal had cost him floating through his mind.

“I’m sorry,” said Scott. “I really am.”

The words were quiet and hidden beneath Brains’ own voice.

“I don’t know where you got the idea that we d-do this regardless of c-cost. I know it’s hard to accept that when your father–”

“Dad has nothing to do with this.”

Scott spun his chair around, pretending to check over his instrumentation. He knew Brains would know exactly how unnecessary his actions were, but they covered the sudden wateriness in his eyes.

“I don’t want to lose them. I don’t want to fail again.”

The truth tumbled from his lips, a quiet admission that he knew would sound like a concession.

He wasn’t talking about his brothers.

There was a long silence, before Scott heard the distinctive click of the seatbelt. He looked up as Brains walked over and placed a hand on his shoulder.

“You need to trust m..me and my judgement, just like you d-do yours. Your father did.”

“I know,” said Scott, staring determinedly down at the ocean beneath his feet. “Brains, I’m sorry. We needed you and I let you down.” He snorted, the image of Brains dangling from underneath his ‘bird brought back to mind. “Literally, and in the worst possible way.”

Brains chuckled as he sat next to Scott on the floor, dangling his legs over the dizzying view of the sea below him.

“Thank you, Scott,” he said quietly. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he looked down.

“Uh, Brains?” asked Scott. “Is that a good idea? Being scared of heights and all?”

Brains glanced up in surprise.

“I’m not s..sc-scared of heights. And even if I were, I know everything about Thunderbird One. You’d have to do something intensely stupid for m..me to be scared in here.”

Scott laughed, the sound loud and full and easing some of the tension in the cockpit.

Brains watched him with a bemused expression on his face.

“International Rescue has a p-problem.”

“We do?”

“Of course we do. Now that I’ve done it once, I’m never going on a rescue I haven’t volunteered for again.”

“What? But what if we need your expertise?”

“I’ll be on the c-comms, of course. But that is exactly the problem.”

“You have that virtual system hooked up to MAX, don’t you?”

“That will be fine for the short term, if MAX is able to go. I need to do some R&D when we get back.”

“For what?”

“Creating new hardware that will allow me address MAX’s limitations of size … without restricting his capabilities. I’ll need to read up on the latest literature, run some preliminary tests.”

Scott’s eyes glazed over as he listened to Brains muttering away to himself, the specifics of quantum technology escaping him, but he couldn’t help the fond smile that escaped him.

“Brains?”

“Hmm?”

“We couldn’t do it without you.”

“I know.”

“You’ll tell me if I do it again, right?”

“Of c-course.”

The silence that fell between them was comfortable and amiable, and Scott found he didn’t want to be the one the break it. His attention was drifting as the ship slowly cut across the sky. He chanced a look across at the engineer, now immersed in a number of texts on his data-tablet.

“Hey, Brains?”

“What is it, Scott?”

“Can I up the speed here?”

Brains blinked and stood carefully.

“As long as you remember you’re out of sick bags. And I won’t be helping you clean up.”

“Okay then.” Scott perked up in his seat, relieved that the easy friendship he enjoyed with Brains had returned. “We’ll be home in two hours.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! 
> 
> Cross posted from Tumblr, originally posted on 24/05/2020


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